This blog archives and publishes fully searchable links to mainstream media articles about BDPA, its members and initiatives.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

CompTIA Blog, 8/31/2011 (Stephanie Brown, Charles Eaton, Wayne Hicks)

Two Foundations Team Up to Provide Scholarships for Talented Minority Students. By the time she had graduated from Stanford University, Stephanie Brown had already completed internships with Fortune 500 companies Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Deloitte. She was only 21. Getting connected with BDPA in high school put Stephanie Brown on a learning track that led to a managing stint at Microsoft.

Says Brown: “Here I had all these awesome role models. It was a turning point in my life.”

Brown attributes much of her success to an organization that has been quietly helping African American students succeed going on four decades. Today with chapters in more than 40 cities, the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) has been helping middle school and high school students develop interest and acumen in technology fields such as IT in which minorities (and women, for that matter) tend to be under-represented.